Attitude

DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE at·ti·tude) n.1. A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself: stood in a graceful attitude. See Synonyms at posture. 2. a. A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work. b. An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition. 3. The orientation of an aircraft's axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon. 4. The orientation of a spacecraft relative to its direction of motion. 5. A position similar to an arabesque in which a ballet dancer stands on one leg with the other raised either in front or in back and bent at the knee.


Noun
1.
attitude - a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways; "he had the attitude that work was fun" mental attitude cognition, knowledge, noesis - the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning
www.thefreedictionary.com/attitude

Attitude

An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about anything in your environment, but there is debate about precise definitions. Eagly and Chaiken, for example, define an attitude "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Though it is sometimes common to define an attitude as toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood to be distinct from attitude as a measure of favorability.
This definition of attitude allows for one's evaluation of an attitude object to vary from extremely negative to extremely positive, but also admits that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object meaning that they might at different times express both positive and negative attitude toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object.]
Whether attitudes are explicit (i.e., deliberately formed) versus implicit (i.e., subconscious) has been a topic of considerable research. Research on, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, uses sophisticated methods involving people's response times to stimuli to show that implicit attitudes exist (perhaps in tandem with explicit attitudes of the same object). Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The relationship etween them is poorly understood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_(psychology)

Motivation


The study of motivation is concerned with understanding processes that drive and direct [[/wiki/Behaviour|behaviour]]. Psychologists study motivational forces to help explain observed patterns and changes in individual human behaviour. Motivational concepts serve several functions, including:
  1. helping to explain pathways between biology and behaviour,
  2. accounting for behavioural variability,
  3. making inferences about private states from public acts,
  4. assigning responsibility for actions, and
  5. explaining perseverance despite adversity.[1]
Understanding motivation is also important for understanding [[/wiki/Individual_differences|individual differences]] more generally. According to motivational theorists, motivation and [[/wiki/Emotion|emotion]]together govern human behaviour. Much empirical attention has been given to determining different aspects, or factors, of motivation.
tivation?[[[/w/index.php?title=Motivation&action=edit&section=1|edit]]] Motivation is a theoretical [[/wiki/Psychological|psychological]] construct about:
  1. that which moves one into action (Deckers, 2005[2])
  2. the force within individuals that energises, maintains and controls their behaviour (Westen, Burton, & Kowalski, 2006)
  3. that which arouses, directs, and causes persistence of behaviour
  4. “the driving force behind behaviour that leads us to pursue some things and avoid others” (Westen et al., 2006[3]).
  5. goal-directed behaviour (desire to achieve an objective, combined with the energy to work towards that goal)
The term "motivation" derives from the Latin verb [[//en.wiktionary.org/wiki/movere|movere]] (to move)

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http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Motivation